Phantom Shadows

Chapter 7

Ami was parked at her computer in David’s study when a commotion arose in the living room.

Other than her, the ground floor should have been empty. Darnell was downstairs training half a dozen Seconds. Étienne was down in one of the basement’s guest rooms, showering off the blood that had coated him when he had come up against five vampires, none of whom had apparently been interested in making friends.

The immortal had not been pleased.

Ami feared such confrontations, drawn out and made more dangerous by Bastien’s plan to seek an alliance, would not endear him to the immortals. His brethren already pretty much hated him. Some outright resented the fact that he still drew breath when Ewen didn’t.

But Ami knew him better than they did. Yes, he had made some mistakes. Some pretty big mistakes, but his intentions had been good.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Marcus had spouted that the other night when she had tried to defend Bastien.

She knew it rankled her husband that she cared for Bastien. But Bastien had been kind to her. He had been a kindred spirit in the early days of their acquaintance, housed not entirely of his own free will at Seth’s castle, facing a new life, surrounded by new people, with nothing but an unknown future and a messed up past for company.

During those first few weeks, while she had recovered from the torture she had endured at Emrys’s hands, she had formed a bond with Bastien that was as unbreakable as those she had formed with Seth, David, and Darnell.

Heavy boots tromped down the hallway.

She rose from the lovely desk David had purchased for her.

“Where’s David?”

Richart stepped into the doorway, Dr. Lipton’s unconscious form cradled in his arms. Melanie’s head drooped over his arm, her hair falling in a mahogany curtain to his waist. The front of her shirt bore three holes and was completely saturated with blood, some of which trailed over his hand and dripped onto the floor. One slender arm swung limply as he ceased moving.

“He isn’t here.” Ami hurried forward. “Chechenko nearly lost his leg tonight, so David had to go to Virginia to heal him.”

“What about Seth?”

She took out her cell phone and dialed.

The sounds of battle came over the line. Metal clashing. Men howling in pain.

“What’s up, sweetheart?” Seth asked.

“Dr. Lipton has been injured.”

“I’m afraid I have my hands full here. You’ll have to—” He grunted, swore, then continued. “You’ll have to call Roland or take her to the network.”

“Okay.”

“Keep me posted though.”

“I will.”

She ended the call. “You’ll have to take her to Roland.”

Richart swore. “I don’t know where the paranoid bastard lives!”

Ami leaned out into the hallway. “Darnell!”

Boots pounded up the stairs from the basement.

Darnell burst into the hallway, the six trainees fast on his heels. “What’s wrong?” His eyes widened when he caught sight of Dr. Lipton. “Oh, shit. How bad?”

“Fatal,” Richart said.

The Seconds all stared somberly.

“David and Seth have their hands full,” Ami told him. “Do you know where Roland lives?”

“No.” He reached into a back pocket and drew out his cell phone. “He’ll have to come here.”

Richart shook his head. “Have him meet us at the network. She won’t live long enough for him to get here. Hopefully, the doctors there will be able to keep her alive until he arrives.”

He vanished in the next instant.

Ami heard some of the trainees gasp. “You call Roland. I’ll call Chris.”

Bastien pitched the last soldier off the roof. The man’s vocal chords had been crushed, so he couldn’t alert any campus stragglers with screams as he plunged to his death.

The snipers were all dead. Now it was time to tackle the soldiers on the ground.

Withdrawing his cell, he dialed Chris.

“Reordon!” the human barked impatiently.

“I need a cleanup crew,” he said and leapt to the dense green lawn below.

“Bastien? What the fuck is going on? Richart just showed up here with Dr. Lipton.”

“Why the hell is he there? Why isn’t David healing her?”

“He can’t. Seth can’t either. They’re both busy elsewhere. The medical team is working on her and Roland is on his way. Now tell me—”

“Ask Bastien where I should meet him,” Richart said in the background.

Knowing now that there was a strong chance Melanie would not make it, Bastien felt an icy calm settle over him. “Tell him to teleport to Peabody Hall. I’m at Fetzer Hall now and am about to sweep through the soldiers between us like a fucking tidal wave.”

“Damn it, we need some of those men left alive to—”

“All you’re getting are corpses. When you send the cleanup crew, send a fucking bus.”

Disconnecting the call, Bastien sped through the darkness toward the first cluster of soldiers.

Chaos infected the remaining soldiers’ ranks as one after another after another ceased communicating over the walkie-talkies. Panicked, unable to spot their attacker even with night vision goggles, they ignored their commander’s orders to maintain radio silence and begged for help, alerting Bastien to all of their positions.

He took out three of a cluster of six in two seconds. The others tried to fire their weapons and retreat at the same time. Shots muffled by top-of-the-line suppressors filled the night, unheard by anyone but Bastien and Richart if he had appeared as instructed.

Bastien didn’t flinch as bullets struck him. Drawing his katanas, he cut the throats of two men, then disarmed the last. Dropping a sword, Bastien yanked the last man forward, sank his fangs into the prick’s neck, and drained him.

Dropping the body, Bastien retrieved his sword and raced for the next cluster. Already his wounds were healing. But he would have continued even if they hadn’t.

These bastards had killed Melanie. By the time this night was over, not one of them would ever draw breath again.

Richart delayed returning to UNC. Roland’s home was half an hour away from the network by car. The Frenchman had seen the doubt on the network doctors’ faces when asked if they could sustain Dr. Lipton for that long. Their best hope, therefore, was for Roland to meet Richart at some halfway point with which Richart was familiar.

Richart paced the agreed upon parking lot impatiently.

The tires of Roland’s black Fisker Karma squealed as he turned into the lot without slowing and slammed on the brakes.

Both front doors flew open. Roland and Sarah hopped out.

“We must hurry,” Richart urged, crossing the brief distance between them and clasping Roland’s shoulder. “I can’t take you both.”

Sarah nodded. “I know. Go ahead. I’ll meet you at the network. Be safe, sweetie.”

“Always,” Roland said.

Then Richart teleported him directly to the network’s OR.

Judging by the frantic activity taking place there, Dr. Lipton had not yet expired. Richart would take that news with him to UNC and hope it would appease Bastien’s wrath.

But first, he had a stop to make.

Étienne d’Alençon knew his brother as well as he knew himself.

The twins were like those sometimes mentioned on the news with a strange combination of awe and skepticism. If Richart’s arm was broken, Étienne felt an ache in his own. If Étienne’s leg was shattered, Richart felt the agonizing pain in his own.

Not the most convenient connection to have, considering the two brothers hunted and fought vampires for a living and were injured damned near every night. But they were used to it.

While Richart didn’t possess the telepathy Étienne and their sister Lisette did, Étienne could often sense when his brother was troubled without reading his thoughts because of the close connection they shared.

Which is what had happened a few minutes ago when Richart had teleported to David’s home.

Hands braced on the shower wall, warm water sluicing down over his hair and rinsing the blood from his battered body, Étienne had felt his brother’s presence and raised his head.

Thanks to his acute hearing, the voices of Richart, Ami, and Darnell had reached him easily. Dr. Lipton had been fatally wounded by the sounds of it.

What the hell had she been doing hunting vampires with them?

No matter.

Something else was agitating his brother.

What is it? he had asked his brother mentally in French.

How soon can you be ready to go? had come his response even as he continued speaking with the others.

A minute. Maybe two. How soon do you need me? He hadn’t asked for what. It didn’t matter.

Get dressed. I don’t want to alarm the others, but . . . I may need help reining in Bastien when I return to UNC.

Étienne had frowned. What do you mean, reining him in?

You’ll see when we get there. I must go.

Étienne had lost the connection when his brother had teleported away.

Swearing, Étienne lathered and rinsed his body at preternatural speeds, then shut off the shower.

David kept a ready supply of new clothing for immortals and their Seconds that rivaled one might find in a department store. So many men and women tromped in and out of the elder immortal’s home (which really did feel like home to many of them), often coming straight from battle, their clothing torn or bloodstained. David liked to be prepared and enjoyed providing his family with anything they might need or that might make them more comfortable, including spare bedrooms and the aforementioned clothing.

Étienne pillaged the wardrobe in the guest room he had been using more and more often of late, pulling out cargo pants, a long-sleeved T-shirt, boxers, and socks. All black.

He didn’t know if David and Darnell had caught on yet, but ever since the immortals in the area had learned that this Emrys prick was itching to get his hands on Ami, they had begun to spend more of their free time here to ensure her safety.

Not that David couldn’t protect her singlehandedly. She just seemed so small and fragile, despite her astonishing ability to kick vampire ass.

And she could kick some serious vampire ass. Étienne had only seen her in action once, but he would never forget it.

Besides he liked it here. His Second, Cameron, had fallen hard for a woman recently and spent every minute he could with her. The house he and Cam inhabited just felt so damned empty now. Since Ami and Marcus had moved in, David’s house was constantly bustling, always entertaining, never boring.

Never lonely.

Dressing in short order, Étienne added his comfy, but battered boots, then packed on the weapons.

I may need help reining in Bastien when I return to UNC.

What the hell did that mean?

Ready for whatever his brother needed him to do, Étienne scaled the stairs to the ground floor.

Ami and Darnell spoke in tense sentences in David’s study.

It sounded like Dr. Lipton wasn’t going to make it. Étienne didn’t really know her, but would mourn her passing nevertheless. She had helped him and the other immortals during the vampire king’s uprising. And, as David often said, she didn’t have to be immortal to be a member of their extended family.

“Seth needs to tell Roland to cut the shit and let Richart know where he lives,” Étienne pronounced as he passed through the doorway into the study. Roland was fanatical about ensuring no one knew where he lived. Had he not been so paranoid and antisocial, Richart could have teleported directly to his home and Dr. Lipton would have been healed by now.

“I’m pretty sure he will after this,” Darnell said.

Ami agreed. “Richart is meeting Roland at a halfway point so he can teleport him the rest of the way to the network, but even then he may be too late.”

The two were huddled around Darnell’s phone.

“One of the nurses on call is giving us live updates,” Ami explained.

Étienne made himself comfortable in one of the chairs across from David’s massive desk. A copy of the latest Stephen King novel rested atop the gleaming surface, a page near the middle marked with a Stephen King bookmark.

David was a big fan of the horror writer.

Darnell swore. “She’s crashing.”

Richart appeared, the front of his coat and shirt saturated with blood.

How much of that, Étienne wondered as he rose, was vampire blood and how much was Dr. Lipton’s?

His brother met his gaze. “Ready?”

“Oui.”

Richart touched his shoulder.

Étienne knew that most immortals and Seconds found teleporting uncomfortable and disorienting. He’d been teleporting with his brother, however, since Richart had first discovered he could do it as a very young boy, so it didn’t disturb him in the least.

They appeared in the shadows of UNC Chapel Hill’s Peabody Hall.

Étienne—like all of the other immortals who were stationed in the area—was well acquainted with the quiet campus.

The stench of blood and death and fear that traveled on the wind tonight staggered him.

Holy hell. What had happened here?

A quick examination of his brother’s thoughts revealed that Richart had only aided in killing a party of vampires.

But eight destroyed vampires wouldn’t create this stench.

Something moved behind them.

Étienne and Richart both swung around, ready to attack.

Bastien stepped from the deeper darkness, eyes glowing, hair loose and disheveled and sticky with blood. Nearly every inch of him was coated with the liquid. His face was crimson with it. His expression was as feral as the most insane vampire Étienne had ever fought. And his thoughts . . .

Étienne drew his swords and motioned for Richart to step back.

Richart grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”

“Seth and David made a mistake. I don’t know how or why but . . . somehow they missed it.”

“Missed what?”

“Bastien isn’t immortal. He’s vampire.”

“No, brother. He’s immortal.”

Étienne shook his head. “You can’t read his thoughts. There’s nothing there but chaos and bloodlust and violence.”

Bastien emitted a low warning growl. Étienne wasn’t even sure Bastien knew whom he faced.

“Stand down, Étienne,” Richart enjoined. “He isn’t maddened. Not the way you think.”

“Bullshit.”

“Look deeper into his thoughts. He cares for Dr. Lipton. More than he will admit even to himself. He fears he has lost her. That the mercenaries have killed her.”

What?

Étienne did as his brother advised and delved deeper into Bastien’s thoughts. Normally he would have had a hard time doing so. Bastien was one of those unique immortals who could sometimes protect his thoughts from telepaths. But the doors he usually erected were down, sundered by the white hot rage that teemed within him. And there beneath it all was what Richart had seen without Étienne’s gift: burgeoning love for Dr. Lipton.

The other immortals thought Bastien visited the network on a nearly daily basis to calm the vampires, but Melanie (as Bastien thought of her) was just as great a lure to him. Her kindness. Her patience with Cliff and Joe. The way she seemed to look at Bastien as a man and not the monster everyone else thought him.

Étienne lowered his weapons and looked at his twin.

He didn’t know what to think of it. He loathed Bastien. Not only had the blackguard started all of the shit they were dealing with now by pitting a fucking vampire army against them and employing Montrose Keegan, he had killed Ewen. Both Étienne and Richart had been friends with the Scottish immortal.

Richart spoke to Bastien as though the latter were a wild horse he sought to calm. “What happened here?”

“Is she dead?” Bastien growled.

“Not yet,” Richart responded, then Étienne heard his brother curse silently.

“Not yet?” Bastien choked out. “She can’t be saved?”

Richart had been right. Not madness. Fear and grief.

Bastien’s hands tightened around the hilts of his swords.

Étienne braced himself to fight the immortal, should he choose to attack the messenger.

“I meant no,” Richart corrected swiftly. “Roland is with her.”

Some of the tension in Bastien’s shoulders eased. The threat seemed to pass.

Étienne risked taking his eyes off the dangerously wound immortal long enough to glance around. He could see several bodies in the distance, shoved up against the wall of the next building behind some shrubs.

“That’s why I was late,” Richart continued. “I met Roland at a halfway point and teleported him the rest of the way.”

Bastien swallowed. “Thank you.”

“What happened here?” Étienne interrupted. Judging by the smell, those bodies were only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. “What did you do?”

“Nothing they didn’t deserve,” Bastien replied darkly.

Étienne remembered Bastien claiming the vampires had had to fear him to follow him. Seeing him now, he had no problem understanding why the vamps had been afraid of their former leader. “How many were there?”

“I lost count.”

“Did you leave none of them alive?”

“Not one.”

“Chris won’t like it.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what Chris does or doesn’t like.” Bastien turned to Richart. “Take me to Melanie.”

Did Chris Reordon know Bastien had a thing for his top researcher? Étienne would think Chris would have limited Bastien’s visits to the network if he had.

“I can’t,” Richart refused bravely. “Not until the cleanup crew arrives.”

“They’ll—”

Richart held up a hand to halt the coming argument. “You’ve left a trail of bodies from here to Fetzer Hall. I don’t want any innocents to stumble upon them and have to be dealt with. We stay until the cleanup crew arrives.”

Jaw clenching, Bastien nodded.

Richart frowned as Bastien staggered backward and leaned against the brick exterior of Peabody Hall. “Are you injured?”

Bastien closed his eyes. “It’s nothing.”

The hum of an engine drew their attention to a chartered bus rumbling up South Columbus Street.

Richart stared. “Chris took you seriously. He actually sent a bus.”

“They’ll need it,” Bastien said, sounding so weary now Étienne began to look for tranquilizer darts. The despised immortal appeared ready to pass out at any moment.

The bus slowed and pulled into the drive between Peabody and Sitterson Hall.

Bastien straightened. “This will go faster if we retrieve the bodies for them.” Wiping his weapons on the cleaner inside of his coat, he sheathed them. “I’ll get the ones on the roofs. You get the ones on the ground.”

As Bastien sped away, Étienne shared a look with Richart.

“Had we gotten here earlier, that would not have gone nearly so well.” Richart nodded at the men stepping off the bus. “It would be best, perhaps, to warn them what they will face.”

Étienne nodded. “I’d encourage them to stay the hell away from Bastien, too.”

Turns out the latter wouldn’t be too difficult.

The humans who had just disembarked yelped and leapt out of the way as two men dressed in Special Ops uniforms plummeted from the sky and hit the pavement beside the bus with a sickening thump.

“Holy shit!” one of them uttered.

Just what Étienne had been thinking.

Bastien’s method of “retrieving” the bodies from the roof apparently entailed scaling the building, grabbing the bodies, and hurling them at the bus.

Richart sighed. “This is going to be a very long night.”

It took the full might of Étienne and his brother to hold Bastien back when they reached the network. Roland had healed Melanie’s wounds, but not before she had lost way too much blood. And not before her heart had stopped beating.

The doctors and nurses at the network were still with her, giving her blood, monitoring her vitals, and praying the cerebral hypoxia that resulted from cardiac arrest had not injured her brain. Before leaving, Roland had told Étienne that brain damage was difficult to detect and harder to heal. Only Seth and David could do it, and some damage exceeded even their abilities.

Bastien was beside himself.

Chris adamantly refused to allow the volatile immortal in the OR.

One of Dr. Lipton’s colleagues—Linda—convinced Chris to let Bastien wait in Cliff ’s apartment with both Cliff and Joe for company. Chris would have vetoed that, too, if he hadn’t had two immortals (and didn’t Étienne feel so lucky to be one of them) on hand to guard the vamps and their former leader.

Étienne stood just inside the door of Cliff’s apartment. Richart had taken Cliff up on the offer of a chair and sat nearby.

Bastien sat on a sofa they’d had to retrieve from Joe’s apartment because Bastien and Cliff had evidently obliterated all of Cliff’s furniture earlier.

The vampires, Cliff and Joe, sat on either side of him. All three leaned forward, elbows on their knees. Bastien dropped his head into his hands, his usual bite me attitude gone.

Cliff, the young African-American vampire, absently twisted his short dreadlocks, not giving the Frenchmen much thought, his concern all for his former leader.

Joe, the vampire on Bastien’s other side, glared at the “intruders,” blue eyes glowing faintly, unkempt blond hair a mass of uncounterfeited bedhead. Of the two vamps, this was the one to watch. Étienne didn’t have to delve too deeply into Joe’s thoughts to know Joe was fighting tooth and nail to keep the madness at bay. And he was losing the battle.

This was Étienne’s first encounter with the vampires . . . if one omitted the night they had surrendered to Seth. Or been captured, as Joe’s burgeoning madness now convinced him.

Étienne kept his eyes on Joe, his hands resting loosely on the hilts of his weapons.

His mind he devoted to listening to Bastien’s mental podcast. And what he heard frankly shocked him. There was much inside that thick skull that Étienne had not expected to see. Or hear.

It pissed him off, because now he was going to have to rethink his opinion of the prick.

I never should have injected myself with the damned antidote.

Bastien kept his ears tuned to Melanie’s heartbeat and monitored the conversations of the men and women who worked on her and watched over her.

Roland had come and gone. Melanie’s wounds had been healed. Her chest was once more pristine. But she wasn’t conscious. And Roland had been unable to determine if she had suffered brain damage when her heart had ceased pumping oxygen to her brain before his arrival.

If I hadn’t injected myself with the damned antidote, she wouldn’t have felt the need to monitor me.

Bastien’s heart clenched when he heard Linda sniff back tears in the OR.

He should have made Richart teleport Melanie back here at the first sign of trouble. Or should have at least had Richart teleport her back up to the library’s roof when she had hitched a ride down with them. Then she wouldn’t have been in the direct line of fire.

Hell, he should have just stayed away from her completely tonight.

But they had needed to know if the antidote would work. The immortals needed that in their arsenal if they were going to defeat Emrys and his mercenaries.

Melanie had been too afraid to test it on any of the others, so he hadn’t seen any other option. No one would have missed Bastien if it had killed him. And Melanie had been stressing over not being able to tell anyone she might have found the answer.

He combed his fingers through his hair, rubbed eyes that felt as though someone had thrown sand into them.

Once he had tested the damned drug, he should have left before she could insist on hunting with him or before Seth could back her. Reordon wouldn’t have stopped him. Bastien would’ve been the one in danger. Reordon would love to see him perish. And if he destroyed himself, so much the better.

As long as Richart hadn’t known where Bastien was, he couldn’t have teleported Melanie to him. Seth wasn’t omniscient. He didn’t know where everyone was all of the time. Bastien could have just laid low for twenty-four hours, dropped by the network so Melanie could see he was okay and that the drug had no lingering side effects, then gone on with the hunting and recruiting.

Then she wouldn’t be lying in there on a fucking table . . . possibly . . .

His throat thickened.

Every time he had come to see Cliff and Joe she had greeted him with a smile.

He combed his fingers through his hair. She was the reason he was able to visit Cliff and Joe as often as he did.

He remembered the first time he had seen her.

Bodies had littered the floor between them, broken but still breathing.

She had been down on the floor, arms covering her head protectively as she waited for the violence to end. Then her arms had fallen away, she had raised her head, and . . .

It had been like the sappiest chick flick ever made where the hero looked at the heroine and shit went all slow motion because she was The One and he knew it. The thump of his boots hitting the industrial-strength vinyl flooring had echoed through the hallway as he had approached her.

She had stood her ground, beautiful brown eyes wide.

The woman had courage. A lot of it.

He had crowded her intentionally as she had let him into Vincent’s room, wanting to touch her and feel her emotions. Sure there had been fear. Concern for the guards he had taken down. But she had not feared him so much as she had the situation.

And once he had seen Vincent . . .

He didn’t know why, but her being there had helped him through that.

Don’t tell them you called me, he had advised her. You don’t want to be linked to me in any way. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all. I threatened you and forced you to open the door for me. You feared for your life.

She hadn’t liked it, had tried to protest. But the guards had come and . . .

For days afterward, every time he had returned to the network he had felt her guilt, her regret that she had not stood up for him and defended him, her determination to never make that mistake again. What a balm that had been, soothing the wounds that had plagued him for over two centuries.

He should have ignored it.

He should have avoided visiting the network when he knew she was working instead of scheduling his damned visits so they would coincide with the time she spent with the vampires.

Perhaps she wouldn’t have cared then. Perhaps, like the rest of them, she wouldn’t have given a crap if the drug harmed him and wouldn’t have insisted on monitoring him.

This was all his fault.

“Seth would remind you of free will,” Étienne said from his position by the door.

Bastien drew his hands down his face and straightened. “What?”

The Frenchman looked uncomfortable. “Free will,” he repeated. “Dr. Lipton chose to accompany you of her own free will.”

Richart looked over at his brother. “She insisted, actually.”

Ordinarily, Bastien would have kicked Étienne’s ass for reading thoughts that were none of his business, but he was too damned tired. He hadn’t mentioned it to the others, but he had been tranqed again while bringing Melanie’s shooters to justice.

Étienne swore.

Richart frowned. “What?”

“He’s been tranqed.”

“Damn it!” Bastien snapped. “Stay out of my head!”

Cliff straightened. “You were drugged again?”

“Maybe they did it,” Joe said, his accusing gaze never straying from the twin immortals.

Bastien patted the boy’s shoulder. “It wasn’t them, Joe. It was the soldiers.”

“The network soldiers,” Joe spat.

“No. It was the mercenaries I told you about. The network soldiers are helping us fight them.”

Cliff spoke up again. “You need to have one of the doctors examine you.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve been dosed three times tonight. First with the tranquilizer. Next with an experimental stimulant Dr. Lipton thought would kill you. Then again with the sedative. You should go see Linda.”

Bastien shook his head.

He didn’t know Linda. He didn’t want to know Linda.

“She’s awake,” Étienne said.

“Linda?” Of course she was. Bastien could hear her weeping.

“No, Isaac Newton. Dr. Lipton. And she’s all right. There’s no brain damage.”

Bastien’s heart began to pound. “How do you know?”

“Because she’s thinking of you.”